Solidarity on Peru’s Day of Heroism from the Shining Trenches of Combat (Luminosas Trincheras de Combate)

June 19, 1980 marks the day when political prisoners of El Fronton, Lurigancho and Callao in Peru launched a protest in their detention cells against the repressive prison conditions and the denial of their liberty.

The Peruvian State once more displayed its murderous character to quell the unrest, as it did with the people’s war being waged by the Peruvian people where genocide was applied with impunity. Nearly 300 prisoners were killed. Worse, they denied the prisoners’ families the right to bury them, taking the bodies to different locations in the country. It took 30 years of struggle before the bodies of eight of the 300 political prisoners were returned to their families. The rest are still held at the National Ministry of Prosecution.

We salute the courage and heroism of the nearly 300 political prisoners massacred. We condemn the atrocity committed against them and echo the call for justice of their families and the Peruvian people.We condemn the State policy of assassination of prisoners of war, disappearances, genocide and mass graves to defeat the people’s war. Their courage and fortitude, together with the Peruvian revolutionaries, however, is not lost in vain as their legacy of struggle continues to inspire the world to transform the prevailing exploitative and oppressive system and engender a society where an individual’s inhumanity to another individual will no longer exist.

The Commission 3 (Defense of Human Rights at the Collective and Individual Levels in the Civil, Economic, Social and Cultural Fields) of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle is in solidarity with the Peruvian people this Day of Heroism from the Shining Trenches of Combat (Luminosas Trincheras de Combate) as we unite with their campaign to denounce atrocities and pay homage to the “revolutionary struggle for peoples’ sovereignty and rights, against all exploitative reactionary states and imperialist war”.

SALUTE TO THE PERUVIAN PEOPLE’S HEROES!LIBERTY TO THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!VICTORY TO THE PERUVIAN PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE!